Molehunt (11 page)

Maximus had another safe house in the Draco Quarter. It could be entered at seven different points, and exited by over a dozen more.

Shortly after his meeting with the Envoy he met Kilroy in the second refuge. The assassin wasn't happy.

‘You knew she found the worm,' the assassin said accusingly, his voice still slurred by his mangled nose and lips.

‘Bright girl.'

‘You let me walk into a trap.'

‘I warned you, Kilroy. But you are a man of experience. Who am I to instruct you?'

‘You would throw away a valuable tool such as I?'

‘If I let you walk into a trap, Kilroy, it was because I knew you would extricate yourself from it, after a number of body bags had been filled. Anyway, it was necessary for
my
trap to work.'

He told Kilroy about the pressure pad bomb. Kilroy grinned. ‘Nice and simple, yet it failed.'

‘In cadet school they called her the Cat, because she had nine lives.'

‘Nine or nineteen, she'll die in the end.'

‘Sooner rather than later, I hope.'

‘She's called you out.'

‘What?'

‘She's called you out. A duel.'

‘Damn,' said Maximus. ‘She's got nerve, I'll give her that.'

Kilroy placed a cube on the table and activated it. Anneke's voice filled the room.

‘You signed your death warrant today, Mole. I'm coming for you.'

She then issued a challenge, naming a place and time, and using such language that even Maximus, who prided himself on his self-control precision, felt his face burning. When the message ended he paced the length of the room.

‘So she wants a duel, does she? By damn, I'll give her a duel.'

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘What? What did you say?'

‘Don't be stupid. She's acting emotionally. Now you are.'

Maximus took a deep breath. Then another. His anger, which had flared swiftly, abated. ‘You're right. We'll turn this to our advantage. We must let her have her duel – just not with me.'

Kilroy's eyes lit up.

‘No, not you either, Kilroy. I need you for something else, an errand concerning a cadet called Bentick. But we need to find one who
will
champion us.'

Maximus spent a sleepless night organising the duel. He also put into play certain other processes: rumours that Anneke killed Viktus herself, that he had abused her as a child and she had gotten her revenge on him. The irony was that while it condemned her, it exonerated her to some extent. Anyway, for all Maximus knew Viktus hadn't kept his hands to himself. How strange, if truth were to mimic lies after all?

The duel was to be in a public place: the Neo-Coliseum. Anneke might have been emotionally distraught but she wasn't insane or incompetent. Public duels were frequent, popular, and officiated by the local hunkies, who collected a commission from both parties for ensuring that ‘clean interfacing' took place. Celebrity duels were broadcast.

Maximus had announced the duel publicly, using the name of the ‘champion' he had hired, a renowned merc and assassin with more than seventy-six kills to his name, many in hand-to-hand combat.

When the day of the duel arrived, Maximus found himself feeling true excitement for the first time in years. He woke early, brimming with energy. After a quick breakfast and shower he stepped outside. The sky did not share his bright mood; it was leaden with a slight drizzle, but this did not deflate his mood.

He joined a queue at the Neo-Coliseum, bought a ticket like everybody else, and took his seat high up in the plastistone bleachers. The arena was modelled on the original Coliseum built by the Terran Roman Vespasiano, though few spectators were aware of this.

Maximus bought a drink and snack from a passing vendor, along with a newszine update. He noted, in a small paragraph, the accidental death of a cadet agent named Bentick. The cadet had slipped in the shower and broken his neck.

Bathrooms are the most dangerous place in any house
, thought Maximus.
Every cadet should remember that
.

There were several duels scheduled that day, and Maximus enjoyed himself thoroughly. It was raining but the umbrella field repelled water from the stands so he had a clear view of the kill shots. Although the crowd wasn't huge, it was loud and rowdy. Maximus joined in wholeheartedly, roaring, and jumping up and shouting when the umpire made a bad call on a foul.

Finally, he saw Anneke Longshadow step onto the field. She was tall, lithe and strikingly beautiful. For a heartbeat Maximus regretted his need to kill her. It was a shame. What couldn't he do with someone like that at his side? Perhaps he could have her cloned and see to the replicant's mental and emotional development.

Maximus's champion entered the field.

Anneke and the merc chose weapons, eyed each other, and backed off a little. The first round would be a gladiatorial fight. If this did not provide a resolution, then a formal duel would take place.

The umpire raised an antiquated gunpowder pistol. There was a puff of smoke followed by a distant pop.

Anneke and the champion stalked each other. Maximus watched hungrily from the stands, running his tongue slowly across his lips. His neuro-cell pinged. He enabled the call reluctantly. ‘What is it?' he asked sharply.

The reply was unexpected. His expression changed, becoming unreadable. ‘Yes, sir. It's my day off, sir. But – yes, sir. I understand. I'll need a few minutes, sir.'

He broke the connection, scowling. Looking down into the arena he realised he had missed something. Damn. But orders were orders. He got out his e-pad and finished the report he should have sent off the day before. It only took a few minutes, and when it was done he sent it in, then checked that other sections of his e-pad database were still securely encrypted.

When he looked down at the duel again it was almost over. Both combatants were covered in blood from shallow wounds. The umpire had called the final bout.

Anneke and the champion selected guns and backed off twenty metres. The umpire's pistol popped again.

The combatants levelled their weapons and fired. Both were struck and spun by the impact of the projectiles. Except that somehow an exploding slug had found its way into the champion's weapon.

Anneke, wounded only, started to sit up when the projectile exploded into a thousand spinning needles, ripping apart her torso and spraying the field with blood, organs and twitching limbs.

Maximus grinned.

A
NNEKE finished recording her challenge to the mole then sold the cube to a pawnshop in the Draco Quarter. She let it be known that it had once belonged to a mere named Kilroy. The gutter telegraph would have Kilroy there within the hour.

He made it in sixty-five minutes.

She did not bother tailing him. He would expect that.
Not
tailing him would really yank his chain, since it was harder to detect an absence than a presence. Paranoid assassins were much easier to handle than confident assassins. It was said that battles are won or lost before either side even reached the battlefield.

Anneke spent the next two days outside the city in an ancient monastery that hired itself out to stressed executives to retreat from life for a few days. Being on holy ground gave her an added measure of protection. Three hundred years earlier, the Mercator Equations had supposedly proved the existence of a spiritual afterlife, so even psychopathic assassins would think twice before committing murder on sacred soil.

On the evening of the second day she walked down the hill from the monastery to the nearest village. Here she used a public netcom and saw that the mole had taken up her challenge. A duel was scheduled for the day after tomorrow.

This was good; it was all going according to plan. In her heart she knew that what she was doing was foolish. The duel was too public, too constricted by the boundaries of space and time. She would actually have to be there. Never wise, being there.

Naturally, she assumed the mole would cheat, and she did not even expect him to show up in person. But then, that wasn't the point. Her challenge was a sharp stick poked under the tail of a sleeping pit bull terrier; it had been laden with all the cues and voice control she could muster. She wanted to hit some deep unhealed wound. Angry people made mistakes.

That night she cried for the first time and could not stop. Deep sobs wracked her body, and in the midst of that pain she realised she didn't grieve for Uncle Viktus alone, or for her parents.

She grieved for herself, utterly alone in the universe, for that little girl who had again lost everything.

She woke the next day to find that it was drizzling. That was good; she always seemed to get lucky when it rained. She rose, and took her time to bathe, eat a tiny breakfast, and catch a shuttle to the city. Here her ‘second' was waiting, the person who would cover her back in the duel. Hopefully.

That's when she heard the first rumours. That she had killed her uncle in revenge for molesting her when she was a child. Her stunned reaction quickly became anger, but she managed to get herself back under control. The mole was at work, knowing that anger would impair her competence, and give him an edge on the duelling field.

Not unexpectedly, given the rumours, she received a summons from RIM to appear before an investigating panel.

She and her second, wearing the traditional purple robe and hood, made their way to the Neo-Coliseum, entering by the duellists' gate. Here opponents were shepherded into different secure sections. Nobody wanted the duellists killing each other before the public could vicariously participate in the grisly death.

Custom also required that each duellist have their own secluded apartment and total privacy. Anneke did not speak to her second. She had other things on her mind. Presently she rested, eyes closed.

It was several hours later when the bell rang. It was an ancient and ominous signal that tolled the death of someone. She jerked awake, amazed that she had been able to sleep at all. Now she felt remarkably refreshed, even buoyant.

Maybe today she would get her revenge. Then again, maybe today she would die.

Ten minutes later, with umpire and cowled seconds watching, Anneke tested her Roman short sword for balance and hefted a small shield. She sized up her adversary, but knew at once that this was not the mole. He was too cocky, too physical, and too old. The deliberately enhanced scars on his body told her that, as did the arrogant sneer on his jut-jawed face. He was also too handsome. None of that fitted the mole's profile she had worked up from fragments of information. He had narrow eyes, alive with febrile cunning but showing none of the cerebral precision that she expected from the mole.

And he lacked hatred.

He grinned at her and gave her a mock bow. ‘I am Grimm. My face will be the last you ever see.'

‘I will sing at your funeral,' Anneke answered.

Grimm laughed but his face remained impassive.

The umpire's gun popped and the two combatants stalked each other, looking for weaknesses, patterns and blind spots.

He favours his left hand
, Anneke noted, incorporating this into her strategy. While she was thinking this, Grimm attacked, nearly ending the contest there and then. Anneke avoided the attack, feinted left, then right, and struck left, slicing open Grimm's forearm.

Grimm leapt back, scowling, and used leather thongs on his wrist to tie off the wound. His second rushed forward and sprayed the gash with numbing sealant.

‘You were saying?' said Anneke.

Grimm shrugged off his second. ‘You're dead,' he said.

Grimm rushed her, patterning her with an onslaught of blows. She lost ground; forced into a series of contacts that he controlled, yet not out of control herself.

In the next few minutes they nicked and jabbed each other several times, raising much blood but causing little damage. Anneke became impatient. She flicked blood from a cut above her eye; tasted salt-laden perspiration. She spared a moment to spit a globule of blood. This was taking too much time. Under normal circumstances she would have finished him in the first sixty seconds. But these weren't normal circumstances.